This week brought folks a strange bit of indecisiveness on Xbox Live Gold pricing from Microsoft, a commitment to Win32, and much, much more. Be sure to catch up via our handy overview.
This last week has brought a bit of indecisiveness from Microsoft in regards to Xbox Live Gold pricing, a commitment to Win32, and an expansion in hardware availability. You can find info about that, as well as much more below, in your Microsoft digest for the week of January 17 – 23. On Friday, Microsoft caused a bit of a reaction from its player base as it decided to unceremoniously – and rather randomly – bump up the price for Xbox Live Gold. The monthly membership was increased by $1 to $10.99, the three-month price by $5 to $29.99, and the six-month membership was bumped up to $59.99. The latter price is the same the service used to cost for an entire year, which means that in effect, Microsoft doubled the price for Gold at the yearly level. Not surprisingly, the reaction was swift and angry, at which point the company thankfully backpedaled on this decision, further stating that pricing will remain that same, and that free-to-play multiplayer games will not require a subscription. It is however very possible that the company was trying to make Xbox Game Pass Ultimate a no-brainer deal at $180 per year, versus the (previously new) $120 per year for Xbox Live Gold. In case you had any doubts that Microsoft really wants folks to adopt Game Pass, you get 12 months of Game Pass Ultimate and a Razer Kishi Controller when buying a Galaxy S21 from the UK’s EE wireless carrier. And speaking of such things, the Games with Gold for February have been revealed, and they include Gears 5, Resident Evil, Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, as well as Lost Planet 2. For folks that do however prefer Game Pass, Remedy’s Control is now available to play as part of the subscription, along with a slew of other titles like The Medium, Desperados III, and many more. For the full lineup of titles, as well as games leaving the subscription, be sure to check out this link.
